Mayo recovered his noose and poised himself again.
In the shallows where they were the boat which bore him became a veritable bucking bronco. It was flung high, it swooped down into the hollows. He made a desperate try for the next stake in line. The noose caught, and he snubbed quickly. The top of the stake came away with a dull crack of rotten wood when the next wave lifted the boat.
Mayo pulled in his rope hand over hand with frantic haste. He was obliged to free the broken stake from the noose and pull his extemporized la.s.so into position again. He made a wider noose. His failure had taught a point or two. He waited till the boat was on the top of a wave. He curbed his desperate impatience, set his teeth, and whirled the noose about his head in a widening circle. Then he cast just as the boat began to drop. The rope encircled the stake, dropped to the water, and he paid out all his free cable so that a good length of the heavy rope might lie in the water and form a makeshift bridle. When he snubbed carefully the noose drew close around the stake, and the latter held. The waves which rode under them were terrific, and Mayo"s heart came into his mouth every time a tug and shock indicated that the rope had come taut.
However, after five minutes of anxious waiting, kneeling in the bow, his eyes on the cable, he found his courage rising and his hopes glowing.
"Does it mean--" gasped the girl, when he turned and looked at her.
"I don"t know just what it will mean in the end, Miss Marston," he said, with emotion. "But it"s a reprieve while that rope holds."
Bradish sat clutching the gunwale with both hands, staring over his shoulder at the waters frothing and roaring on the sh.o.r.e. The girl glanced at him occasionally with a certain wonderment in her expression.
It seemed to Mayo that she was trying to a.s.sure herself that Bradish was some person whom she knew. But she did not appear to have much success in making him seem real. She spoke to him once or twice in an undertone, but he did not answer. Then she turned her back on him.
Suddenly Mayo leaped up and shouted.
A man was running along the sandy crest of a low hill near the beach. He disappeared in a little structure that was no larger than a sentry-box.
"There"s a coast-guard patrol from the life-saving station. There must be one somewhere along here!"
The man rushed out and flourished his arms.
"He has telephoned," explained Mayo. "Those are the boys! There"s hope for us!"
There was more than hope--there was rescue after some hours of dreary and anxious waiting.
The life-boat came frothing down the sea from the distant inlet, and they were lifted on board by strong arms.
And then Alma Marston gave Mayo the strangest look he had ever received from a woman"s eyes. But her lips grew white and her eyes closed, and she lapsed into unconsciousness while he folded a blanket about her.
"You must have had quite a job of it, managing a woman through this sc.r.a.pe," suggested the captain of the crew.
"It"s just the other way," declared Mayo. "I"m giving her credit for saving the whole of us."
"How"s that?"
"I might find it a little hard to make you understand, captain. Let it stand as I have said it."
XXV - A GIRL AND HER DEBT OF HONOR
Says she, "You lime-juice sailor, Now see me home you may."
But when we reached her cottage door She unto me did say-- And a-way, you santee, My dear Annie!
O you New York girls, Can"t you dance the polka!
--Walking Down the Broadway.
Mayo was promptly informed that Captain Downs and the crew of the _Alden_ were safe.
"He caught our flare, got his motor to working, and made the inlet by a lucky stab," explained the coast-station captain. "But he didn"t reckon he"d ever see you folks again. How did it happen he didn"t tell me there was a woman aboard?"
"You"ll have to ask him."
"Who is she?"
"You"ll have to ask him that, too. I"m only a sailor."
The captain looked him over with considerable suspicion: His shirt was torn and his white skin was revealed. The drenching by rain and spray had played havoc with his disguise; most of the coloring had been washed away.
"Have you got anything special to say about yourself?"
"No, sir."
The captain turned his back on his men and leaned close to Mayo. "They have had your picture in the paper this week," he said. "You"re the captain they are wanting in that _Montana_ case. They"re after you. I"ve got to report on this thing, you understand!"
"Very well, captain."
"But I reckon we"ll talk it all over after we get to the station,"
said the master, kindly. "There may be something in it that I don"t understand."
"There"s considerable in it that I don"t understand myself, just now, but I"m going to find out," declared Captain Mayo.
They placed Ahpa Marston in the care of the station captain"s wife as soon as they were safely on sh.o.r.e in the inlet. Fortunate chance had sent the woman to the station that day on a visit to her husband.
Captain Downs, fed and warmed, watched the new arrivals eat beside the kitchen stove and listened to the story Mayo had for him.
The bedraggled cat lapped milk, protected from the resentful jealousy of the station"s regular feline attache by the one-eyed cook.
And afterward, closeted with Captain Downs and the station captain, Mayo went over his case.
"I must say you seem to be pretty hard and fast ash.o.r.e in mighty sloppy water," commented the coastguard captain. "It isn"t my especial business--but what do you propose to do?"
"Go to New York and take what they"re going to hand me, I suppose. I ought to have stayed there and faced the music. I have put myself in bad by running away. But I was rattled."
"The best of us get rattled," said the host, consolingly. "I"m not a policeman, sheriff, or detective, mate. I"ll report this case as Captain Downs and so many souls saved from the schooner _Alden_. You"d better trot along up to the city and face "em as a man should. I"ll rig you out in some of my clothes. Your old friend, Wa.s.s, meant well by rushing you away, but I"ve always found that in a man"s fight you can"t do much unless you"re close enough to t"other fellow to hit him when he reaches for you."
A half-hour later, made presentable in the coast-guard captain"s liberty suit, Mayo walked through the kitchen. Bradish and the cook were still in front of the stove.
The captain"s wife, standing in a door which admitted to an inner room, put up a finger to signal the young man and then nodded her head in invitation. "The young lady wants to see you, sir," she informed him in a whisper, when he stepped to her side. "Go in!" She closed the door behind him and remained in the kitchen.
He stood in the middle of the room and gazed at the girl for some time, and neither of them spoke. She was swathed in blankets and was huddled in a big chair; her face was wan and her eyes showed her weariness. But her voice was firm and earnest when she addressed him.
"Captain Mayo, what I am going to say to you will sound very strange.
Tell me that you"ll listen to me as you would listen to a man."
"I"m afraid--" he stammered.
"It"s too bad that man and woman can seldom meet on the plane where man and man meet. But I don"t want to be considered a girl just now. I"m one human being, and you"re another, and I owe something to you which must be paid, or I shall be disgraced by a debt which will worry me all my life." She put out her hands and knotted the fingers together in appeal.